iii. Congratulations to BC MLA Andrew Weaver for his successful appeal of a libel judgment that had found he hadn’t been defamed in scurrilous online attacks against his personal and professional credibility by another academic. Congratulations also to his esteemed counsel – Roger and Alan McConchie who are pillars of the Canadian libel bar.
The BC Court of Appeal’s full decision is here.

In honour of May Day, we have Billy Bragg giving a clap out to NHS workers in the UK and an instrumental version of There is Power in a Union

ENJOY THE SILENCE: PSEUDOLAW AT THE SUPREME COURT OF CANADA
DONALD J.NETOLITZKY AND RICHARD WARMAN
Pseudolaw is a collection of legal-sounding but false rules that purport to be law, employed by groups including the Detaxer and Freemen-on-the-Land movements. While pseudolaw is universally rejected by Canadian courts, no Supreme Court of Canada decision addresses these concepts.

This study reviews 51 unsuccessful Supreme Court leave applications that potentially involve pseudolaw to determine what pseudolaw issues were raised, whether those issues were comprehensible, and therefore if by its silence the Supreme Court has implicitly rejected these concepts.Some pseudolaw-related leave applications were not comprehensible to a legally trained reader; however, the remainder clearly imply that the Supreme Court of Canada has been exposed to the cornerstone concepts of modern pseudolaw, including “Strawman” Theory, and has rejected these ideas as not having national significance.

13 March 2020

That seems about right

2 February 2020
Update re discipline proceedings against Toronto lawyer David Faed who knowingly advertised in a neo-Nazi tabloid whose operators were convicted criminally of anti-Jewish and anti-women hate propaganda charges. The wheels of justice continue to grind.

The libel action is in relation to false allegations they published online and have refused to retract and apologize for despite being served a libel notice and my providing them evidence the material is demonstrably false. The material has already been found to be defamatory in another libel action.

This is the second libel action I have been forced to take against Jonathan Kay. In 2008, his (then) employer the National Post apologized and retracted other false allegations made by Kay and settled out of court.

17 January 2020
For a friendly

3 September 2019

On 26 August 2019, I filed a criminal complaint for hate propaganda with the Ottawa Police Service against Rebel News Network Ltd., its directors at the relevant times, Ezra Levant, Hamish Marshall, and Hannah Vanderkooy, as well as Rebel News presenter Faith Bazos (aka Faith Goldy). The complaint alleges they have breached s. 319(2) of the Criminal Code by wilfully promoting hatred of the Muslim community through 48 videos containing hate propaganda published to the world through the Rebel News Network website and Youtube channel from 2015-2018. The videos feature Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Tommy Robinson – 40 videos) and Faith Bazos (Faith Goldy – 8 videos).

Section 319 of the Criminal Code reads:

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-319.html
Wilful promotion of hatred
319(2) Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group is guilty of
(a) an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or
(b) an offence punishable on summary conviction

As a citizen, and especially as a lawyer, I have a duty to report evidence of what I believe to be criminal conduct to the police. I think that the criminal complaint speaks for itself, and it is not my intent to make any public comment on it.